GTA Assembly #3 - 31/03/22

GTA Assembly #3 - 31/03/22

Video and audio

English recording

Notes

Agenda

  1. Tribute to Gustavo Esteva, GTAGlobal Tapestry of Alternatives core team member
  2. Reporting on GTA activities- newsletters, webinars, mapping, Adelante, and resilience stories
  3. Upcoming events where we can collaborate: World Social Forum, and Stockholm + 50
  4. Generating voluntary or paid translators for GTA / related events
  5. Check out and date-time for the next meeting

Summary

Introductions and check-ins

Tribute to Gustavo Esteva, GTA core team member

Ashish, Arturo Escobar, Arturo, and Shrishtee shared their heartfelt experiences and anecdotes with Gustavo.

Reporting on GTA activities- newsletters, webinars, mapping, Adelante, and resilience stories Newsletters

Shrishtee: GTA has started coming up with newsletters and periodicals. The last periodical which was on “Climate change and alternatives” is accessible on the website and is fully available in Spanish, courtesy of Martin- editor of website from Aplaneta. He is also helping us to design the newsletter. The next periodical will be based on education, learning and alternatives, which Lina, Steven and others from PedaGoG will contribute to.

Resilience stories

In context to the resilience stories, 3 themes have emerged as possible contributions * Climate change and resilience * War and resilience by communities * Radical democracy

Members of GTA can let us know if their networks have ideas or access to any stories that can be documented here.

Webinars

As previously discussed, GTA is looking at more collaborative webinar series with the help of organisations that are a part of the GTA Assembly. Lina and Steven will share more details on the upcoming series of webinars on education and learning.

There are ideas for various other thematic webinar series coming in few months.

There is a webinar on 1st April organized by Educere, PedaGoG, TAP and GTA called “Living Utopias” which will discuss alternative educational initiatives from India. The idea is to share existing alternatives and strategies taken by them for its functioning.

Coming up, Pallavi is curating a webinar on “Money and alternatives” organized keeping 2 timezones in mind. Few other ideas are on “Technologies and alternatives”, “Indigenous worldviews and local community worldviews”, and “Business and alternatives”.

Mapping

Franco: The platform for mapping is already running with all endorsers appearing. Right now the test implementations are going on. And were looking at the possibility of endorsers creating their profiles and starting to populate and improve their own profiles as an organization. The next step will new series of reports in the resilience series. We plan to integrate them into the mapping process. We are working on making this tool available for the weavers to do their own mapping using open source technologies.

Available beta version online: https://map.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/Index

Link to register new user: https://map.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/Register

Adelante

Ashish: One of the processes GTA started was to start a dialogue with 7 other global platforms. That dialogue platform is now called Adelante and one of the things are discussing now is collective actions in the upcoming WSF, we will talk about a hybrid session on issues such as community resilience and a few others.

Events

Upcoming events where we can collaborate: World Social Forum, and Stockholm + 50

World Social Forum

Vasna: Adelante has proposed a few activities. It's over a 6 day period. 1st day is a global march for social justice. Days 2-5 will be different events independently organized. Day 6 will be an assemblies day to bring together different organizations to talk about specific themes. So far there are 5 suggestions. Some ideas that have come up:

  • Staying grounded and maintaining our humanity when moving from local to global
  • Radical democracy alternatives in local places
  • Food and basic needs sovereignty, Unitierra / Crianza Mutua Mexico
  • Learning and knowledge for emancipatory praxis, a proposal on learning/emancipation from CEALL, Unitierra / Crianza Mutua Mexico, TAP proposal
  • Community resilience and just transitions and then on Assembly Day a session on convergence and radical alternatives.
  • Radical alternatives in technology & communications
  • Latin American weaving of the tapestry of alternatives

Idea is to have a panel from organizations and Adelante, participate. Suggestions from the assembly are welcome on alternative events and names of people and organizations that could join these 5 events.

A proposal to have a small working group that can meet more often over the next month. WSF WG: GTA core + Aaron + Martha + Steven

Outcomes of WSF are very rich and diverse, we could have collective knowledge building that helps in reflecting on the sessions undertaken. Draft texts, documentation, and the booklet could be a few options.

A proposal to have a webinar that is reported back from each of these areas and someway brings everything together. This would help sustain these conversations and convergences. So that the next step is always a part of the previous one.

Stockholm 50

UN is planning a conference from 31st May led by Friends of the Earth, Stockholm. Space might be available to conduct activities, although the information is still unclear.

A list of translators has been curated. 1. GTA can make use of this resource pool 2. Endorsers can refer GTA and use the resource 3. Any other translators that the network might know could be added for collective use

Any suggestions of people that offer translation of/to non-colonial languages would be helpful.

Next assembly

Check out and date-time for the next meeting The group collectively agrees on 30th June: 2 PM GMT